Military Madness: Neo Nectaris Review

To the moon, Alice.

If you owned a TurboGrafx-16, then you already know Military Madness as the precursor to Nintendo's Advance Wars. This turn-based strategy game pits rival armies against each other for control of the moon. Tank, artillery guns, heavy troopers, and more clash in a grid of hexagons to determine dominance. Instead of actually controlling your forces, you rely on superior numbers -- literal numbers, mind you, decided by multiple factors like terrain and battle experience -- to carry the day. The goal is simple: crush your opponent to complete the map and move on to the next.

Military Madness: Neo Nectaris is based on the sequel to the original game, which expanded the scope ever so slightly, added new stages, and new wrinkles for combat equations. For example, now instead of just hammering an enemy from the high ground for the advantage, you must also consider nearby units. Surrounding an enemy, even partially, reduces its defense and attack power. So, while playing lunar general, you should always consider the best support strategy for your army, not just how to best stick in the spear.

Put a hex on your enemies.

The addition of support strategy makes Military Madness a better game than the original, although that groundbreaking game is still a good play to this day. With the ability to use my weakest units to boost the attack power of my best forces, I no longer felt like I had dead weight on the field. Even if you only have two soldiers left in a unit, just parking them next to a tank before that unit attacks can make all the difference, especially when coupled with bonuses from terrain and unit experience (ie. the number of battles the unit has been in up to this point in the skirmish).

The iPhone Military Madness: Neo Nectaris benefits from slightly improved visuals over the TG-16 original (crisper sprites, etc.) and the remixed music is top notch. However, I'm surprised that you cannot zoom out to see the entire battlefield. All maps are larger than the iPhone screen, so you are constantly scrolling around to see enemy positions during your turn. A pinch-to-zoom feature would be enormously useful and I hope Hudson considers providing it in an update.

Another odd exclusion: multiplayer. Military Madness is fine against the computer, but even better versus a friend. To not even include a pass-to-play option -- much less non-synchronized multiplayer with push notification -- is bizarre, especially when Hudson is (hopefully) fully aware that many other iPhone strategy games offer multiplayer, such as UniWar and Reign of Swords.

The Verdict

As a big fan of the original Military Madness, I was excited to see Military Madness: Neo Nectaris parachute into the App Store. As a single-player game, it is quite good. The computer is a ruthless foe but you can outsmart it across the provided 48 stages. But the lack of multiplayer is a glaring omission on a platform that offers easy connectivity. I sincerely hope that this is addressed in an update, because not having it makes Neo Nectaris harder to recommend over many of the rival strategy games in the App Store that do more for less.